How to Overcome Challenges of the Catering Industry?

Catering in the US means cut-throat competition and high chances of failure. Thankfully platforms such as OnlineCheckWriter.com provide customized automation solutions to various businesses, including catering services. If you are in the catering business, you need hard work, patience, smartness, and experience to survive and grow.

Let’s go through the common challenges that arise in the catering industry and how you can overcome them.

Finding and Keeping Good Management

Management is the frontrunner of any business. If the management is failing, the entire business is bound to fail. For your catering business, you need a good and dynamic manager. Your manager must be able to handle the cooks, servers, dishwashers, and more at any given time during any event. Moreover, he must also be able to adapt to different events.

The catering industry witnesses a lot of variety. There are catering weddings, catering for a birthday party, catering for corporate events.

Being a catering manager is a demanding and challenging task. And it’s not something that can be learned overnight. Most successful catering managers start at the bottom and work their way up as they gain experience.

You can try to promote your existing loyal employees as managers. Experience is a must for managing catering services. If you are hiring a manager from outside make sure they have hands-on experience and give them thorough training.

High Staff Turnover/Attrition Rate

High staff turnover is a huge challenge within the hospitality industry. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hotel and motel industry experiences an employee turnover rate of 74%. There are a lot of reasons for such high attrition.

The most common being unclear job expectations. Another reason is the toxic work environment with high-pressure working conditions.

If the industry is suffering from high employee turnover, it doesn’t mean that your catering service should suffer the same. There are several things that you can do to counteract this negative perception. Firstly, you should have a proper scientific procedure for hiring people. Your employees should know in and out about their job role, right from the start.

Secondly, try to create a safe working environment. Invest a part of your time in employees, communicating with them. Get feedback from them. Ask them suggestions to improve their working conditions. Of course, this doesn’t mean you give your employees everything they want. Finding a reasonable middle path can both increase employees’ productivity and make them stay longer with your business. You should also give extra money for additional work done and bonuses for better work.

Long Working Hours

Another major issue with catering is no fixed working hours. Although working in the catering industry is fun and exciting. Every time you get to meet different people with new and exciting venues. But this also means your work is characterized by long working hours, especially in the evening.

You might have to work late for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the event is stretched for longer than expected. Other times you are stuck with cleanup or the client is too busy to settle your account.

Your best bet is to implement best automation practices. So, you can prepare beforehand for preventing such scenarios. The best thing about living in a high-powered technology era is you can get online programs to automate many of your business practices. For instance, OnlineCheckWriter.com can do a lot for your catering, from invoicing to payroll processing, payment management, accounting, and a lot more.

Training the Staff

You don’t have much time left, between planning and delivering catering service for every next event. Obviously, employee training is not on your high priority list. And it is actually very hard for you to take time out from such a high-paced work culture. But you cannot overlook training, as customer experience is a differentiating factor in your line of work.

Staff training is an ongoing process. You should begin the new employees training from the day first of their joining. Initially, more time should be given to their training. As employees began to mature, all you need is to upgrade their skills from time to time.

As an owner, you should want to focus on developing your employees to grow as your business does. Your employees are less likely to leave your business if you are consistently helping them to grow as well.

Dealing with Unreasonable Customers

You can be the best caterer in the industry. Still, you will have unruly or angry customers. Sometimes you make little mistakes such as showing up a little late or providing an incorrect order. Other times you have customers who just have unrealistic expectations. Dealing with rude and unruly customers is one of the most difficult and frustrating tasks of the catering business.

You already know that being calm, composed, and smiling is the best professional way of dealing with any customer. But it is easier said than done. You should also accept that there’s no such thing as total customer satisfaction. It is a constant process in that you have to continuously learn and improve.

Difficult to Stay Organized

In catering, your venue and party size change constantly. And because of that, it is difficult to keep your business organized and in proper order. Lack of order might result in a lot of otherwise avoidable mistakes.

For instance, you arrive at your event venue and then realize that the number of serving trays is very less. Or the main ingredient of your dessert is missing. All these might seem like a very silly mistake, but it is very costly in the commercial sphere.

To save yourself from all these hassles, you should double-check everything before going to a venue. Designate a place for everything in your business and make sure that everything is found in its place at the right time. This will save you valuable time and zero in on the opportunities your business provides.

High Food Wastage

Americans waste nearly 80 billion pounds of food every year. 40% of this wastage comes from the hospitality industry.

As a caterer, it is extremely difficult to come up with the exact quantity of food that you need for an event. It is a disaster for your business if you show up at an event and run out of food. Thus, catering is a delicate balance between making too little food and too much food.

As a caterer, your first step is to come up with the most accurate estimate of how much is needed at an event. Secondly, you can try to serve food on smaller plates. It prevents people from piling up their plates which later gets thrown in the garbage bin. Finally, have good storage facilities and industry-grade refrigerators.

Reducing your food waste is not just cost-effective; it is also very helpful for the environment.